Never Really
by Lif61
Summary: Team Free Will hug and show each other affection during intense moments throughout their lives.


**A/N:** **Written for week 4 of SPN Hiatus Creations 2019 on tumblr. Prompt: Hugs/Affection**

**Despite the prompt, this is not a happy story.**

* * *

Sam, Dean, and their little family never really hugged… at least, not when things were calm.

* * *

Blood poured from Dean's wound, leaking through Sam's fingers. His brother held him back against him, arms wrapped tight, hands trying to hold the vicious bite wound closed. A vampire had led him into an ambush in an alley, and then the monsters had started ripping into him. Sam had saved him, fighting viciously, taking punches and chopping off heads while listening to the whimpers that Dean couldn't stop from leaving his shivering lips. The wound above his hip was the worst — a mess of slashes and marks gouged into his skin that might've hit his appendix or a bit of his abdominal wall, and he was pretty sure some teeth were stuck in him — and without Castiel or Jack to heal him, Dean feared what this could mean.

Cold was seeping into him as his blood left him, agony taking over his system, and he was shaking so fiercely he could barely talk — just held onto Sam, fingers weak.

His brother had called an ambulance, lied there'd been an animal attack, and had quickly hung up so he could drag Dean away from the piles of decapitated bodies and the matching heads. It had left him screaming through his teeth, bleeding even more, but at least it'd gotten him away from the mess, away from where he'd been hurt.

"I gotcha, Dean. I gotcha."

Sam's face was pressed against his head, his brother not caring that his hair was sweaty, all of him clammy, gross, a possibly-dying mess, and Dean tried to reach up to him, but only made it up to his bicep before he was groaning, pain raking through him.

"S-Sammy."

"It's okay. The ambulance is coming. You're gonna be fine. You're okay."

But even as he spoke Dean heard the panic in his brother's voice, the prayers that he didn't make known, and Dean held his arm tight to his chest, sitting up to be closer in his brother's embrace.

"I-It's okay, S-Sammy. It's okay."

Sirens blared, red and blue lights flashing across the dilapidated brick walls and lamp posts puddling the grimy sidewalk in a dreary attempt at gold.

Sam hugged him.

* * *

Ketch had shot Castiel. It hadn't worried Castiel at first, but then he wasn't healing, not even when they got back to the motel. The bullet, a 5.56mm, had gotten him in the shoulder, breaking the bone, and there wasn't an exit wound. It needed surgery, and Sam was the only one able to do it — Ketch had beaten Dean to Hell and back, and now he knelt beside Cas' bed, almost tipping over. He was tightly clasping his hand, their fingers intertwined, and Dean had given Cas his belt for him to bite down on. Now, with Castiel stripped down to the waist, Sam got to work.

Castiel had felt pain before. He'd been alive since the birth of humanity, when pain was new. He'd been shot, stabbed, sliced into, beaten, possessed, tortured, but it didn't numb any pain that came afterwards. Maybe it was a sick joke, maybe God was a sadist, a writer playing with the lives of others, but it still hurt.

Oh _god_, it hurt!

He bit down on the belt, warm leather flooding his mouth, tears building in his eyes, and he squeezed Dean's fingers, forgetting his own strength. Maybe he'd tried to sit up because Dean was on him now, hand cupping his face. Sam was holding the wound open with retractors, and digging deeper and deeper with the forceps, and Castiel screamed.

"Hey, look at me! Look at me! Cas, look at me. It's okay. It's okay. Just hold me, I'm right here."

Dean.

Dean leaned his forehead against his, their eyes meeting as pain engulfed him, and they breathed together, Cas' heavy and pained, his voice in them.

"You're doing good," Dean told him. "Doing good."

Something got pulled from him, aches splintering out down his arm and into his chest, and he arched his body up into Dean.

But then he was healing, pain leaving him.

"Oh, thank god," Sam breathed, faltering back, dropping the bullet Ketch had shot him with, his hands blood-soaked.

Dean knelt over Cas, hugging him, and he hugged back, curling his fingers against his jacket, encompassing him with healing light.

"Thank you," Cas breathed. Then he added, louder, "Both of you."

Sam gave him a teary smile, and Dean buried his head against his shoulder. Castiel hugged him harder.

* * *

"You good?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam lied, opening up his beer and sitting himself down on the hood of the Impala.

They'd stopped along a ridge in the Poconos that gave them a view of the rounded, green mountains across the way. They were meeting up with Castiel to clear out a shed a rougarou had been living in at the base of one of the mountains. Another hunter had killed the thing awhile back, but the bones and pickings from the meals were still left behind, and it was the prime spot for a lone wendigo to settle down in.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he added.

Sam watched Dean and Castiel share a look, and he turned away, having a sip of beer to ignore it. Dean had been reaching into the cooler to grab himself a drink, but now he came around to him, and sat up on the hood, leaning against him. Castiel came to stand in front, and Sam felt cornered, but their stances were somewhat relaxed — he wasn't in danger.

"Lucifer's back," Dean stated.

Sam turned to Dean, looking just beneath his eyes (in truth he wanted to duck his head, hide himself).

"I know."

His voice sounded dead to his own ears, defeated.

Castiel began, "Sam, it's okay if—"

Feeling trapped, alone, like this was too much of them trying to get him to talk, to "support him" through this fucked up thing, he lost it. That was the only way to describe it. He forgot himself, everything numb and hot and cold all at once, air not getting in.

Sam was off the Impala, throwing his beer so it smashed against a tree.

"What do you want me to say?!" he yelled, face fuming red, getting right up in Cas' space and making him back up. "Huh?" Dean was up in a second to grab him, and Sam let his hand stay, let him circle in front so he could address both of them. "You wanna hear how much i hurts? How much — how much it terrifies me? How I can't sleep a night and when I do — when I do he's…?"

Sam couldn't go on, found tears trailing down his face, and he finished, voice weaker than he'd ever heard it around them, "What do you want me to say?"

They both were holding him now, helping to keep him up (he hadn't even realized his legs were ready to give out). There were tears in their eyes.

"Sammy, we just want to help you."

"If you feel like you can't do this alone—"

"—just hang onto us."

And he did, holding them close.

* * *

Jack watched from the Empty, watched his family hug his body. Bruised, bleeding, half-dead — they held him, crying. He used his powers to watch, sitting up there, all alone, and he held himself, legs pulled in close, arms about himself, wishing he could feel them.

But he couldn't.

Dead.

He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he knew: words of guilt, words of regret, words of sorrow, of love.

Jack ran his hand along what passed as the floor for this realm he was in — this impenetrable black that only he could see through, and he _felt_. He felt like he hadn't felt in months. Before he knew it he was sobbing, scraping against the floor, trying to reach out to them.

"I'm-I'm sorry!" he got out. "I'm sorry."

He was sorry for burning his soul away, sorry for killing Mary, sorry for hurting them…

Sorry for being dead.

And still they hugged him.

And Jack was on his hands and knees now, clawing, wanting to hold all of them one last time.

"Sam!"

_Sam held him as he almost collapsed before Rowena, his body dying._

"Dean!"

_Dean pulled him close when he came back to life, turning his face into his chest._

"Castiel!"

_Castiel hugged him in his mother's Heaven, overcome with having found him._

They held an empty body, and Jack held no one.

* * *

"Sam, Dean, and Castiel all hugged Jack's body, but had their heads bowed, unable to look at how God had mutilated their son, and they wished he could hug them back, or that they'd all done this one last time.

They never really did hug unless things were bad or it was the end of the world. They were going to have to change that, but here at the end of all things, maybe they'd never get to.


End file.
